


Out of Alignment

by Carmarthen



Category: Classical Greece and Rome History & Literature RPF
Genre: Ambiguity, Historical, M/M, Politics, RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 04:22:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2929922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The king of Bithynia is not what he expected, and young Caesar finds it is perhaps not quite so simple to separate personal pleasure from political expediency as he first thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of Alignment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sineala](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/gifts).



> Thinly researched, I am afraid, but here is the long-overdue delivery of last year's Fandom Stocking IOU. I am sorry it is neither Marvel nor a proper long story, but I am sadly out of practice at Roman politicking.

_It is simple,_ Caesar had told himself, before he let Nicomedes lead him into the bedroom. _This is a political matter. It does not matter that he seems to treat you as a friend, an equal. It does not matter that you have laughed together over wine and gaming, that he has a wicked humor and a sharp mind, that he is not so old as you expected. That he is even handsome._

_What matters is that he is a king, and you are a senator of Rome—young, yes, and you know what your enemies whisper about you, but not a fool—that you have your aims and he has his._

That here, among embroidered cushions and silk coverlets, in these dark rooms as rich with incense as a temple, those aims seem to align—well, _seem to_ is not _do,_ and it doesn't have to mean anything that when Nicomedes kisses him there seems to be more in it than lust, a tenderness that makes it easier to play his role: the pliant, naive boy.

And it is not so much of a hardship, really—although pliancy is alien to his nature, enjoying pleasure is not. And there is pleasure to be found here, in strong hands and sure touches, in Nicomedes' warm laughter at the inevitable awkward moment. It is not so hard to see why his people love him, even as they whisper about his boys, his stubborn refusal to remarry and produce an heir after his wife died.

Soon enough they'll whisper about him, too, but perhaps that will be more use than anything. There's no threat in the king's catamite, after all, not as there is in Rome's ambassador.

If there is a certain joy to be found in all the things he knows he ought not to do—for who could say no to a king?—that is beside the point. Caesar knows the difference between business and pleasure. (Even if it is easy, so easy, to forget that for a moment when Nicomedes presses him down against the couch and breaches his body with slow patience. It is nothing like he thought it would be, or he would have done it long ago, when it was safer to his honor.)

No, it is simple. A political matter. Two canny men—and he _is_ a man, for all that he plays the boy's part here—whose aims for a moment in the warm darkness seem to align. One wants ships for Rome's glory, a clientalae in rich Bithynia for his own gain; the other a friend in Rome, a friend who will one day not only be held in favor, but himself determine who is favored. (He thinks that is what Nicomedes wants; he thinks Nicomedes sees his ambition as clearly as he does. It is better than thinking that what Nicomedes wants had nothing to do with politics at all.) It's a play where they both know the other is masked, and what lies beneath the mask is unimportant.

It is simple.

And so Caesar can never quite remember, later, why when Nicomedes murmurs a request into his bare shoulder while they lie panting and tangled together, he says yes.

The request is something that will follow him for a lifetime. One day he will march into Rome in triumph, clad in the purple and garlanded with the victor's laurels, and even then the men at his back will sing of this time with only half-affectionate mockery, a gaudy tissue of silken rumors with this truth the sturdy woolen warp of it.

He should say no.

But as Nicomedes spreads one big, warm hand over his chest, looks at him with a softness in his dark eyes that doesn't seem like a mask at all and asks—calling him _beloved,_ calling him _my Ganymede,_ the kind of pretty names real lovers use—there's only one answer he can give.

(Perhaps it is the wrong answer, but here, now, it feels right.)


End file.
